(OT) Spelling (Re: Can we focus on Harry Please)

[John Walton]

No: HPFGUIDX 5632

Okay, Dave, since you asked for a spelling/grammar critique...

SPELLING

<snip> not lets complain that the election </snip>: "lets" should be
"let's": it's a contraction of the first person plural (let us) rather than
third person singular (he lets).

<snip> many sports game that </snip>: "game" should be "games": plural
rather than singular.

<snip> republican </snip>: Should be "Republican": proper noun.

<snip> Hermoine the Head Girl </snip>: should be "Hermione".

<snip> Harry Potter killer off Voldemort </snip>: "off" should be "of".

<snip> the ballot in Palm beach </snip>: "beach" should be capitalised as it
is part of a proper noun.

<snip> demarcate wins </snip>: Should be "Democrat": wrong word (possibly
due to the Almighty Spell Checker O'Doom?) and capitalised.
 
<snip> republican wins Abortion rights </snip>: Should either be "Abortion
Rights" or "abortion rights", not a mishmash of both.

<snip> where 32 states constitutions </snip>: Should be "states'
Constitutions": possessive and proper noun.

<snip> first amendment </snip>: Should be "First Amendment": proper noun.

<snip> Sorry Dave </snip>: Should have some form of punctuation: "Sorry,
Dave", "Sorry. -Dave"

GRAMMAR

*Numerous run-on and poorly-punctuated sentences, including:

" All this discussion is ridiculous
there was an election on Nov. 7th you do not keep voting till the
guy you want wins." (Needs to be punctuated with commas or split into two
sentences)

"There are many sports game that go into
overtime and come down to one point the losing team doesn't
sue the winning team for 3 more minutes!" (Ditto)

"When the absentee 
ballots all come in I believe and I supported neither of these 2
morons, will show Bush the popular winner (the military has
always voted about 65% republican." (The clause "and I supported neither of
these 2 morons" should be punctuated as such, either with parentheses,
commas or dashes. The following clause in parentheses also needs a closing
parenthesis)

"1) no voters rights were denied the justice department has
stated it and will stick to it, in a court of law this will dictate the
decision" (Needs to be punctuated with commas or split into two sentences)

LAYOUT

During a three-page (for my computer which is set at 'net standard, since I
do a lot of proofing online) email, you used only three paragraphs. In
comparison, Peg's "How errors creep in" used seven in the same space. This
email uses far more as it deals with each point in a paragraph.

This is useful because (a) it allows people to more easily isolate each
point and reply to it; and (b) it's much easier on the eye, especially if
using an online mail client like Yahoo! or Hotmail.
 
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Just as an aside, I used to be a teacher's aide with some of the junior
classes at school. If Dave's email had been handed to me to mark in an
English class, I would have given it a C or D at 13-year-old level. I know,
this isn't an English class, but as a group of literary-minded people in a
text-based email situation, we're sure to (even unconsciously) judge
people's intelligence on the basis of their text.

If you're going to put forward opinions, people will take you much more
seriously (not to mention understand you better) if you spell, punctuate and
otherwise present your thoughts correctly. Take the following examples:

1) if u dont use puntucashun better then this peeple wont lissen 2 u.

2) If you, don't use. Grammar better than that; People won't listen to you.

3) if u use 2 much abbrs then ppl wont lisn 2 u.

If anyone is looking for some pointers (and a bit of humour as well!), check
out Holy Mother Grammatica's Guide to Good Writing:

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/5307/guide.htm

==

I hope nobody considered the above mean or nasty. Dave *did* ask for a
correction, and I thought it might be useful to point out some common
errors. Let this be an eye-opener not to rely completely on spell-checks
(and especially not on grammar checks, which are abominably dreadful) and
instead proof-read your posts for clarity and intelligibility before sending
:)

Cheers,

--John

=====================================================
John Walton     john at walton.to    ICQ: 96203920

I'm sure George W. Bush isn't dyslexic.
Why, he's never even been to Dyslexia.

Don't blame me -- I voted for Gore.
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